As of this writing, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has earned $401.8 million worldwide after 13 days of global play, including a $145.4 Fri-Mon debut in China (Monday was a holiday, hence the $31.8m gross). That puts it over the unadjusted global cume of Jurassic Park III ($367m in 2001) and in a position to possibly cross $500m worldwide before it even opens in North America on Thursday night. Whether or not the J.A. Bayona-directed sequel ends up higher or lower than the projected $140 million opening weekend guestimate, it’s already a hit and potentially a gamechanger in terms of scheduling the biggest of big movies.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is not the first big Hollywood movie to open overseas first. Plenty of big movies (like almost every MCU movie between Thor and Thor: Ragnarok) open overseas seven to ten days ahead of their respective domestic debuts. And even most movies that open worldwide simultaneously debut in certain territories on the Wednesday or Thursday before their North American opening day.

But the handful of big movies that debuted overseas way ahead of their domestic debuts, such as Pan (16 days), The Huntsman: Winter’s War (16 days) and Battleship (five weeks) were critical failures and relative commercial flops. Fallen Kingdom is neither.

While the reviews aren’t superlative, they are (so far) mixed, with a slight 60/40 advantage toward positive notices as the film heads into its domestic debut. And while it is entirely possible that the “Eh, it’s okay, I guess” critical consensus, as well as the buzz surrounding Incredibles 2, will temper the film’s domestic debut and overall domestic reception, it almost doesn’t matter.

Maybe the film will open with $130 million and crawl to $325m, which is about where we expected the first Jurassic World to end up before it blindsided us all with a $208m opening and $652m domestic total three years ago. Maybe it will merely fall as much as Lost World fell from Jurassic Park 21 years ago and end up with a still-superb $417m domestic cume. Or maybe, and I’m not actually expecting this, but maybe it’ll fall really hard and end up playing in the same domestic sandbox ($210m-$245m) as Justice League, Solo, Fate of the Furious and the fourth Pirates and Transformers movies.

Here’s the kicker: It doesn’t really matter. The problem with Walt Disney's Solo: A Star Wars Story isn’t that it is only going to make around $205 million in North America, but that A) reshoots drove the budget past $250m, and B) it was completely ignored overseas, to the point where it’ll earn around 55% of its likely $370m worldwide cume in North America. Had it played like Universal's Fate of the Furious, Paramount/Viacom Inc.'s Age of Extinction or Walt Disney's Dead Men Tell No Tales, it’d be flirting with $750m to $850m worldwide and we’d be having a very different conversation.

Such it is, so far, with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The movie has earned $112 million in China and should earn at least $220m total in what is now the biggest moviegoing marketplace in the world. It has earned around $265m in global opening weekends thus far ($151m last weekend, $112m in China, plus whatever it made in the two other new markets this past weekend) in the 51 markets in which it has debuted. Even a straight-up 2.5x multiplier of those debuts gets the film to $662m worldwide.

So even if it didn’t play in any more markets for the rest of its run, and it has 17 new territories this week, it’d still make more than The Lost World ($619 million in 1997). With $402 million in 13 days of global play, if it merely doubles that figure it ends up above $800m worldwide. Throw in an extra $200m from North America and you’ve got a $1 billion grosser.

I’m not necessarily expecting doom and gloom in North America, but the movie is already a big enough smash around the world to withstand any severe domestic downturn. Like the FIFA World Cup which Fallen Kingdom opened early overseas to avoid, this fifth Jurassic World movie doesn’t really need North American interest to qualify as a smash hit.

In that sense, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is unique not in that it was a big Hollywood flick that didn’t need domestic grosses, but that it (more so even than Sony's recent 007 flicks) preemptively proved that by earning around $500 million worldwide before it even opened in North America.

I've studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for 28 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last ten years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing s...